Keith Olbermann, ousted from MSNBC and even Al Gore’s Current TV, was nevertheless invited to join the roundtable on Sunday’s (April 22) ABC This Week, where he spouted about how rising gas prices are supposedly the result a “deliberate” conspiratorial effort to damage President Obama:
The lowest price in the last six years – the nadir of gas prices at the pump – was the day of this President’s inauguration in 2009. There has to be some connection between that being the least busy political moment of a President’s career – where you’re not going to hurt him, you’re not going to harm him that way – and the price of gas. There has to be an almost deliberate, or at least a side effect quality to that. There must be.
After the program, Stephanopoulos tweeted [1]: “Fantastic having you on the roundtable @KeithOlbermann. Hope to see you back @ThisWeekABC soon.”
Washington Examiner “Washington Secrets [2]” columnist Paul Bedard on Monday afternoon made that his “Mainstream Scream” of the week [3], relaying how “Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick” for the claim which earned “five out of five screams.” My comment: “Olbermann is too crazy for MSNBC and Al Gore, but ABC News decided he’d bring a worthwhile perspective to their Sunday show, thus giving the far-left ex-cable ranter his biggest platform yet to share his delusions.”
For all the previous “Mainstream Media Scream [4]” entries.
Olbermann’s conspiratorial pontificating came in response to George Stephanopoulos pointing out, after a clip of President Obama blaming speculators for driving up the gas price, “the problem is they actually hadn’t been able to come up with any evidence that speculation was driving up the price. There’s a lot of hunches, no hard evidence.” More, and video, in Noel Sheppard’s NewsBusters post, “Olbermann: Traders Are Driving Up Gas Prices to Harm Obama [5].”
(In an interesting moment earlier in the roundtable, during a discussion of the impact of social media on the campaign, Stephanopoulos recalled how he worked on rapid response for the 1988 Dukakis campaign. That prompted Democratic operative Donna Brazile to share: “I remember you would hand me my talking points.”)